--- title: What You Gain by Building Your Own Game Engine | daily.dev description: An in-depth exploration of why developers might choose to build a custom game engine instead of using Unity, Unreal, or Godot, kicking off a series documenting... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-gain-by-building-your-own-game-engine-nam5bxph6 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What You Gain by Building Your Own Game Engine | daily.dev og:description: An in-depth exploration of why developers might choose to build a custom game engine instead of using Unity, Unreal, or Godot, kicking off a series documenting... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-gain-by-building-your-own-game-engine-nam5bxph6 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/NAM5BXph6.png og:image:alt: What You Gain by Building Your Own Game Engine og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What You Gain by Building Your Own Game Engine **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 35 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An in-depth exploration of why developers might choose to build a custom game engine instead of using Unity, Unreal, or Godot, kicking off a series documenting the native C++ port of the indie game Soup Raiders. It covers the historical trend of custom engines on Steam, defines what counts as a 'custom' engine versus using a commercial one, and surveys real-world examples (Bastion, FTL, Factorio, Noita, Teardown, RED Engine) to illustrate motivations: learning, independence from platform/licensing risk (citing Unity's 2023 runtime fee controversy and multiple license revocations), low-level performance control, unique game mechanics, specialisation, multiplatform/retro hardware support, and modding support. It closes with cautionary notes from industry voices (Tyler Glaiel, Maxim Kiselev, Nikita Lisitsa) that building an engine is time-consuming and rarely saves money, and that the discipline should always be to build a game alongside the engine. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why did Unity's 2023 runtime fee announcement cause such backlash among game developers? Unity announced a runtime fee based on game installs in September 2023, scheduled to take effect January 1, 2024. The immediate backlash led Unity to revise the policy on September 22 via an open letter from Marc Whitten, but the fee was not fully cancelled until September 2024 under new CEO Matt Bromberg. The controversy pushed many developers toward Godot or building their own engines. _Anyone weighing engine lock-in against pricing risk can follow tooling shifts like this on daily.dev._ ### How much does Unreal Engine 5 cost for a commercial game? Unreal Engine 5 is free until a game earns US$1M in lifetime gross revenue, after which Epic charges a 5% royalty on further revenue. Revenue earned through the Epic Games Store is royalty-free. This pricing structure differs from Unity, which requires a paid Pro or Enterprise seat license once revenue thresholds are crossed rather than a royalty. _Developers comparing engine licensing costs before committing to a stack can track pricing changes on daily.dev.','question':'placeholder'_ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 113 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-09-14). **TL;DR:** Discussion centers on whether custom engines are actually common among successful indie games, with heavy debate over definitions ('engine' vs 'framework'), while others push back that motivation should just be enjoyment rather than justified gains, and several warn that engine-building is a trap that eats time meant for actually finishing a game. **Sentiment:** 25% positive · 45% mixed · 30% skeptical **The case for** - Building your own engine can produce a unique aesthetic and enable novel game designs that off-the-shelf engines make harder to achieve. - Some argue it's worth doing purely for fun/learning, without needing to justify it by outcomes. - A custom engine can reduce exposure to a third party's organizational or licensing issues. **The pushback** - Many developers get stuck perpetually building the engine and never ship a game, becoming 'engine demos' rather than games. - There's disagreement over whether custom engines are actually common among successful indie titles, with claims of survivorship bias. - Building an asset pipeline is called out as the least fun, most time-consuming part of rolling your own engine. - Terms like 'custom engine' vs 'framework' (e.g. MonoGame, Bevy, OGRE) are used loosely, muddying claims about how many games are truly custom-engine. - Buggy launches (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077) are attributed to organizational issues rather than engine choice, undercutting the case for custom engines improving quality. **By community** - lobsters (positive): Small thread broadly sympathetic to building for its own sake, with a practical aside about asset pipelines being the real time sink. - hackernews (heated): Long, contentious thread arguing over statistics, engine-vs-framework definitions, and whether custom engines are worth it, with strong voices on both sides plus cautionary anecdotes about never shipping. **Hottest debate:** Whether custom/'other' engines are genuinely common among successful indie games or whether this is survivorship bias and definitional sleight of hand (e.g. counting frameworks like MonoGame or Bevy as 'custom engines'). **Open questions** - Is there a good existing open-source asset pipeline that could be reused instead of building one from scratch each time? - Where exactly is the line between a 'framework' and a 'game engine' (e.g. MonoGame, Bevy, Raylib)? - Is the 13% 'other' category in the cited Steam data actually representative of custom engines? **Highlights** > I'm reminded of the story of Randy, that I watched unfold over quite a few months - he couldn't help himself but to work on new features, rewriting existing features, hacking to make his workflow better, but really struggled to release anything, like a form of bikeshedding where you are actually still productive, except what you produce doesn't seem to meaningfully get you closer to shipping at all. The videos that document the journey probably haven't gone anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/@randyprime/videos https://www.youtube.com/@randyprime2/videos If you want to make an engine and learn about making engines - make an engine. If you want to ship a game - think long and hard about whether an off-the-shelf engine wouldn't be a better investment of your time (because you wouldn't invest hundreds or thousands of hours making something bespoke and could actually make the features you need within an existing engine). I suspect that with the great FOSS and source available engines we have, like Godot, there will be plugins for msot things and folks will be able to make their own without having to start from scratch (unless they really want to), like the most competent terrain implementation for Godot so far is a plugin - https://tokisan.com/terrain3d/ Hell, maybe also contribute to lesser known engines if you feel like it: like jMonkeyEngine, Flax (it's great, like a lightweight and 3D oriented Unity / Unreal with a footprint closer to Godot and a nice C# integration), Stride and others. > — [KronisLV on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49305043) > Game developers who find themselves writing a game engine are no longer writing a game, they are writing a demo for their game engine. > — [wewewedxfgdf on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49305488) > The thing about game engines is that 80%+ of engine developers time is spent on designing tools and a checkbox/slider for you to click. Another 15% is spent on conflits when combining featured. Less than 5% of the time is invested in actual engine features. In raw homegrown engines, you call a function to enable the feature you want. Your 5% time matches commercial engine 5% time. You dont gain much if you know what you are doing. If you dont know what you are doing, well … > — [smallstepforman on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49305044) > Around 18k indie games are released on steam per year. Around 300 of those are successful, making over $1 million [1]. VERY few of those successes are using custom engines. Your list is probably close to complete, being far less than 1%. [1] https://www.shanethegamer.com/research/indie-games-statistic... > — [nomel on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49304797) > What you lose: the time you can never get back working on the least fun/interesting building block that shapes the entire game engine: the asset pipeline. Anybody have a favorite existing open source asset pipeline waiting to have a game loop and renderer attached at the end? > — [kel on lobsters · 2 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/ueyokn/what_you_gain_by_building_your_own_game#c_hxlaho) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/ueyokn/what_you_gain_by_building_your_own_game) · 20 points · 3 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49303405) · 55 points · 110 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [So, you want to make a game engine](https://daily.dev/posts/so-you-want-to-make-a-game-engine-hexbfxesr) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#unity](https://daily.dev/tags/unity), [#c++](https://daily.dev/tags/c++), [#godot](https://daily.dev/tags/godot) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-gain-by-building-your-own-game-engine-nam5bxph6) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What You Gain by Building Your Own Game Engine","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-gain-by-building-your-own-game-engine-nam5bxph6","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-gain-by-building-your-own-game-engine-nam5bxph6"},"datePublished":"2026-08-15T17:24:57.704Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:54:34.246Z","description":"An in-depth exploration of why developers might choose to build a custom game engine instead of using Unity, Unreal, or Godot, kicking off a series documenting...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--OHB84bZF--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2010","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--OHB84bZF--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2010","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-gain-by-building-your-own-game-engine-nam5bxph6","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"game-development,unity,c++,godot","timeRequired":"PT35M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What You Gain by Building Your Own Game Engine"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-gain-by-building-your-own-game-engine-nam5bxph6#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did Unity's 2023 runtime fee announcement cause such backlash among game developers?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Unity announced a runtime fee based on game installs in September 2023, scheduled to take effect January 1, 2024. 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